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The WPB assigned the FT's to the railroads it deemed most able to benefit from the new locomotives. The Santa Fe received by far the largest allocation, given its heavy war traffic and the difficulty and expense of providing water for steam locomotives on its long desert stretches.

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World War II intervened, and the U.S. government through the War Production Board began assigning priorities for manufacturing and for allocation of raw materials to companies. The government allowed construction of no more diesel-electric locomotives for passenger traffic, restricting diesel-electric locomotive production to yard switchers and freight locomotives. Moreover, restrictions imposed on particular companies affected their destiny beyond the war. Fairbanks, Morse & Company had produced a diesel engine that proved to be so efficient, the War Production Board diverted its entire output for use in navy submarines, thus forcing Fairbanks-Morse entirely out of the diesel- electric locomotive business until 1944, during a critical period in the development of diesel-electric locomotives. Baldwin Locomotive Works, as the nation's foremost builder of steam locomotives, received War Production Board encouragement in that field, and could market its existing line of diesel-electric yard switchers, but the War Production Board would not allow it to undertake design and development of diesel-electric freight and passenger units. As a consequence, Baldwin could enter the diesel-electric field in a serious way only after 1945, by which time the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors Corporation and the American Locomotive Company had a near-stranglehold on the market for freight and passenger diesels. Both Baldwin (soon to merge with Lima-Hamilton) and Fairbanks-Morse produced notable diesel-electric locomotives after World War II, some of which still operated in 1990, but neither got a sufficient grip on the market to make a success of diesel sales.